IN THE MORE than five years I have been teaching and speaking about Natural Family Planning (NFP), I've found that people everywhere have the same questions and concerns.

Sometimes their comments or questions are pejorative, but more often, they are just genuinely curious and honestly want to understand why the Catholic Church — virtually alone — continues to teach that contraception and sterilization are always gravely immoral.

The Catholic Church’s teachings on family planning are logical, consistent and wonderfully liberating when properly understood, yet they are rejected by the overwhelming majority of Catholics.

The frequency with which I hear the same objections and the shocking infrequency with which this topic is competently addressed in homilies, marriage preparation and RCIA programs leads me to believe that a significant part of the problem is that people simply haven’t had their very reasonable questions adequately addressed and can’t find anyone who is willing and able do so.

Here are the four objections I hear most often and the responses I have found to be most helpful. Learn them and be ready the next time someone challenges you about Catholic family planning.

I hear this objection almost every time I speak and there is probably no aspect of the Church’s teaching on the immorality of contraception that priests and laity alike misunderstand or object to more often than that which applies in the case of a couple who has a serious medical reason not to become pregnant.

It is true that drugs and procedures that, as a side effect of treating a disease, make a couple unable to conceive are morally permissible because the purpose of such drugs and procedures is to control the damage done to the body by the disease – not to suppress the normal, healthy, God-given fertility of the couple.

Pope Paul VI stated it this way: “. . . the Church does not consider at all illicit the use of those therapeutic means necessary to cure bodily diseases, even if a foreseeable impediment to procreation should result there from - provided such impediment is not directly intended for any motive whatsoever” (Humanae Vitae, 15).

A relatively straightforward example of the use of “therapeutic means” which prove an impediment to procreation would be the treatment of a woman with cancer of the uterus. In such a case it is definitely morally acceptable for a surgeon to treat the cancer by removing the woman’s uterus even though she will be sterile after this operation. The purpose of the surgery is to rid the woman’s body of disease and the fact that she will no longer be able to conceive is an unintended side-effect.

Sterility that results from treating a disease is, however, morally distinct from the use of contraception or sterilization when pregnancy itself would be dangerous or even life threatening for a woman or any child she conceives. Women for whom pregnancy would be a serious health risk are usually told – by their doctors, relatives, friends and, sadly, even their priests - that because they have a ‘medical reason’ not to become pregnant it is acceptable for them to use contraception or be surgically sterilized. But this is not true.

A woman whose health or life would be jeopardized by pregnancy certainly has very grave reasons to avoid conceiving, but, as always, both the end (in this case avoiding pregnancy) and the means by which the end is achieved must be morally good and the Church is absolutely clear that drugs, devices and procedures whose sole purpose is to make a couple unable to conceive are never morally acceptable:

“. . .the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children . . . Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means” (Humanae Vitae, 14).

“The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception)” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2399).

“Contraception is to be judged so profoundly unlawful as to be never, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that in human life, situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God” (Pope John Paul II, L’Osservatore Romano, October 10, 1983, 7).

A simple way to determine whether a proposed treatment that impacts a woman’s fertility is morally acceptable or not is to consider whether the same treatment would be necessary for a single or celibate woman. If the answer is no, then the proposed drug or procedure is immoral.

Understandably this is can be difficult to accept because few of us are convinced that sometimes we must trust God with our very lives. Remember, though, that Christ has told us that “whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25) and that every one of us is called to the heroic virtue of sainthood. Refusing sterilization or contraception when a couple has a truly life-or-death reason to avoid pregnancy is unquestionably an act of heroic virtue in this day and age and so it should be no surprise that the temptation to do what the world tells us is ‘reasonable’ can be very strong in this situation.

If we look honestly at such a couple’s situation, however, we begin to see that like every immoral act, the ‘reasonableness’ of contraception is based on a lie.

There are only two ways for a couple to be completely certain that they will not conceive:

One is total abstinence (celibacy) until the woman has definitively reached menopause. The other is castration - the complete removal of either the woman’s ovaries or the man’s testes.

No form of contraception, even surgical sterilization, can guarantee that a couple will not conceive. The chance may be very, very small, but there are real, live people who have conceived despite having been sterilized. It does happen. Careful, consistent use of NFP is as effective as sterilization for avoiding pregnancy, but to believe that anything short of total abstinence or castration will result in certain 'safety' from pregnancy is to engage in self-deception.

The real decision, therefore, that couples with the gravest of reasons to avoid pregnancy need to come to is whether they actually require absolute certainty that they will not conceive - in which case total abstinence is the only true option - or whether the small degree of uncertainty that will remain, no matter what they do, if they continue to be sexually active is something that they can entrust to God.
 

“I don’t see any difference between contraception and NFP.”

This objection can mean two different things.  Sometimes it comes from someone who doesn’t see what’s wrong with contraception and so doesn’t see why he or she should bother with the ‘hassle’ of using NFP instead. Other times, however, the objection is that even NFP is immoral because it usurps a power that belongs to God alone.

Imagine two hypothetical couples, each with the same number of children, the same financial and material resources, the same psychological stresses and health concerns, each with a serious, selfless reason not to conceive another child.

One couple uses NFP to avoid pregnancy. The other uses contraception. Neither conceives. So what’s the difference? Why is one (the couple using NFP to avoid pregnancy) cooperating with God’s call to responsible parenthood and the other (the couple contracepting) engaged in something gravely immoral?

Well, suppose that I have a serious and morally good reason to lose weight, but that there is a gallon of double-super-fudge-chunk -brownie ice cream . . . with nuts . . . and marshmallows . . . in my freezer and I have already eaten a full dinner.

I may really want to eat that ice cream and I may know that the pleasure derived from the act of eating ice cream is a God-given good and something it is perfectly reasonable for me to desire, but the consequences of that act (40 gazillion calories) would not be a good thing for me at this particular time.

Recognizing that the consequences of eating a gallon of ice cream are not a part of God’s plan for me right now I have two choices. I could eat the ice cream and at the same time attempt to avoid the consequences of the act by interrupting the natural processes that lead from chewing to swallowing to digestion to the absorption of the calories that I ought to avoid and I could theoretically interrupt this process in a number of ways. I could chew the ice cream, but spit it into the sink instead of swallowing it. I could swallow the ice cream, but only after installing a physical barrier in my throat so that it would not reach my stomach to be digested. I could have myself hormonally or surgically altered so that I was no longer able to digest ice cream at all.

Or I could refrain from eating the ice cream until a time in the future when I no longer needed to avoid the consequences of doing so.

The result – the end - is the same in both cases, but clearly the means are not and the morality of any act is dependent on both the end and the means. And a difference in the means is the critical difference between contraception and NFP. 

Some of the above ideas for avoiding the caloric consequences of ice cream eating are somewhat distasteful. It’s unnatural and a little weird to think about altering either the act of eating or our bodies so that the normal process of digestion is impeded. But that a married couple would ever feel that their bodies or the act designed by God to be the physical sign of their marriage vows (sexual intercourse) – the way in which those vows are supposed to ‘take flesh’ – should be altered so that its consequences of that act could be avoided, is a great deal more than unnatural or weird.  It is tragic.

Christian marriage is a sacrament and sexual intercourse (the marital act) is the physical sign of that sacrament in the same way that the body and blood of Christ under the appearances of bread and wine are the physical signs of the Eucharist. Consider for a moment how shocking it would be to see someone receive the Eucharist and then avoid the consequences of the act by spitting out the host. Contraception should shock us no less.

By God’s design there is “an inseparable connection . . . which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act” (Humanae Vitae, 12). Also by God’s design, however, procreation is only possible during a relatively short time each menstrual cycle and during the infertile parts of each cycle a couple with serious reasons to avoid conceiving is free to experience the unitive aspect of the marital act – while still respecting the integrity of their bodies and the act itself – knowing that their procreative abilities are temporarily dormant.

And what about the objection that NFP is just as immoral as contraception because it does not allow God total control over the number and spacing of a couple’s children?

Ultimately God always has total control over every area of our lives, no matter what we do, simply because He is God and therefore omnipotent. If He chooses (as He once did) even a virgin can conceive and bear a child. But God has given each of us free will and thereby the choice to cooperate with His plan for us or not. Couples who use NFP in a morally correct manner do so in an attempt to cooperate with God’s plan for the number and spacing of their children – not restrict His authority over their families. 

As any parent will tell you there is a great deal more to being a good Christian parent that just ‘popping ‘em out.’ The Church recognizes that the education and upbringing of each child is a tremendous responsibility and that there are limits – physical, material, psychological and social – to the number of children many couples can raise well.  The Church, therefore, does not have any specific teaching on the ideal family size. All married couples are called to be both generous and responsible in their acceptance of children, but the exact number and spacing of those children is a matter for each couple to discern privately. Granted, in this day and age, the temptation to forgo generosity in favor of responsibility is usually stronger, but it is not somehow better to fail to be responsible in the use of our procreative powers than to fail to be generous.

Pope Paul VI clearly explained this need to cooperate with God’s dual call to generosity and responsibility in Humanae Vitae: “With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time.

Responsible parenthood, as we use the term here, has one further essential aspect of paramount importance. It concerns the objective moral order which was established by God, and of which a right conscience is the true interpreter. In a word, the exercise of responsible parenthood requires that husband and wife, keeping a right order of priorities, recognize their own duties toward God, themselves, their families and human society.

From this it follows that they are not free to act as they choose in the service of transmitting life, as if it were wholly up to them to decide what is the right course to follow. On the contrary, they are bound to ensure that what they do corresponds to the will of God the Creator. The very nature of marriage and its use makes His will clear, while the constant teaching of the Church spells it out” (10).

Here, too, ice cream provides a good analogy. The act of eating ice cream in and of itself is not immoral in the least.  Humans are designed to enjoy sweets, even newborn babies strongly prefer sweet tasting liquids and human breast milk is remarkably sweet. But there are times when the good of enjoying dessert ought to be foregone for the sake of a greater good. If I am severely obese, have high cholesterol and have been warned repeatedly that I will almost certainly have a heart attack and be unable to care for my children if I do not modify my diet, to go ahead and eat as much ice cream as I desire whenever I desire is to fail to exercise the virtues of both prudence and temperance and is therefore morally wrong.

Likewise, if a couple has discerned through prayer, reflection and discussion that because they have a serious reason to avoid pregnancy it is not God’s desire for them to conceive again at present, then they are called to cooperate with God and use morally licit means (NFP) to avoid conceiving. In doing so they no more usurp God’s authority over their family than they do when they seek employment to provide income to meet their material needs rather than waiting for God to send them manna from heaven or educate their children rather than waiting for each of them to be divinely inspired.

“My conscience tells me that it’s not wrong for me to use contraception,
and I must follow my conscience.”

The answer here is that the duty to follow one’s conscience is predicated on having properly formed one’s conscience by accepting the authoritative teachings of the Church.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that “conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act he is going to perform, is in the process of performing or has already completed” (1778) and in Veritatis Splendor Pope John Paul II informs us that “the judgment of conscience has an imperative character: man must act in accordance with it” (60).

So a person’s conscience is not his feelings about something, but rather the use of his intellect and reason to determine what is the right thing to do in a particular situation, and once a person has carefully and objectively considered the situation and determines what he believes to be right, he is morally obligated to follow that judgment even if it will be difficult, costly or unpleasant.

So far this should not be difficult for most people to grasp. Almost everyone, Catholic or not, understands the moral obligation to do what one believes to be right (to follow one’s conscience) up to this point. But to stop here and claim that all that is required of me is to carefully consider the situation and then do whatever I believe to be best is an incomplete and badly distorted understanding of authentic Catholic teaching. Because there is no reference to an objective standard of right and wrong – because ultimately I alone decide for myself what is right and what is not – this kind of  ‘freedom of conscience’ is nothing more than simple moral relativism

Catholics believe in objective truth and recognize the Catholic Church as the teacher of that truth. Simply by identifying myself as a Catholic I claim to accept the authority of the Church to inform my conscience through its teachings. Again, the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The law of God entrusted to the Church is taught to the faithful as the way of life and truth. The faithful therefore have the right to be instructed in the divine saving precepts that purify judgment and, with grace, heal wounded human reason. They have the duty of observing the constitutions and decrees conveyed by the legitimate authority of the Church” (2037).

In acknowledging the existence of objective truth and the Catholic Church as the teacher of that truth we can see that there are two parts to the obligation to follow one’s conscience. I must first properly form my conscience by accepting the official teachings of the Church in matters of faith and morals (and this unquestionably includes sexual ethics and family planning) before making a ”judgment of reason” about a proposed act. The teachings of the Church are to be the starting point for determining whether a given act is right or wrong and we are always morally obligated to adhere to these teachings as we work out their particular application in our lives. Or, put another way, ”Personal conscience and reason should not be set in opposition to the moral law or the magisterium of the Church” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2039).

Here's another example of how this works: We know that, “for just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children,” but we are cautioned that it is every couple’s “duty to make certain that their desire [to postpone or avoid pregnancy] is not motivated by selfishness but is in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2368). There is, however, no official Catholic list or formula for determining what constitutes such a just and unselfish reason. Husbands and wives must prayerfully examine their particular situation, weigh the two requirements of generosity and responsibility against each other and arrive at a decision about their own, unique family circumstances. No one can do this for them and it is their moral obligation to follow the dictates of their consciences once they have arrived at a decision.

We also know, however, that “’every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible’ [i.e. contraception and sterilization] is intrinsically evil” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2370) and here there is no need (or room) for interpretation. That contraception and sterilization are evil and always immoral applies to every person in every situation and we are morally obligated to accept this truth as the starting point for any consideration of whether or how to space or limit the births of our children 

And what of the objection that we free to disregard Church teaching on some particular matter because the Church doesn’t always teach infallibly? As any skeptic will point out, there have been occasions on which officials of the Church – even popes - have proclaimed untruths and you have probably heard someone use this as a justification for picking and choosing which teachings to follow. The fact is, however, that matters of faith or morals which all bishops gathered throughout the world have, at any point in history, declared to be held definitively are taught infallibly¹ and the intrinsic, universal evil of contraception is one of these.²

Finally, it is important to understand that no one, including an individual priest or bishop, can release us from the moral obligation to follow the Church’s teaching on contraception. Freedom of conscience is, in the words of Pope John Paul II, “never freedom ‘from’ the truth but always and only freedom ‘in’ the truth” (Veritatis Splendor 64).

“I’ve tried NFP and it didn’t work.”

This is probably the most difficult objection to answer because it can mean so many different things and because it is usually extremely emotionally charged, so it is wise to proceed with great gentleness and sensitivity.

When properly taught and correctly and consistently used, NFP is over 99 percent effective for avoiding pregnancy³, but while NFP is not difficult to understand it usually does require some formal instruction to learn and use correctly. Often when someone says that they have already tried NFP and it didn’t work, the problem was that they never really learned NFP in the first place.  Sometimes they tried the calendar rhythm method (an older method of NFP – developed around 1930 - that is only effective if a woman has very regular cycles, which many women do not) or read a pamphlet or website or book on NFP and thought they understood it well enough to use it. Other couples who have experienced an unexpected pregnancy did learn NFP properly, but later decided that keeping a chart was unnecessary or that one or more of the rules did not apply to them or did not apply in the cycle in which they conceived.

When a couple who has experienced an unplanned pregnancy while using NFP has the chart of the cycle in which they conceived reviewed by an NFP teacher they will almost always find that they conceived as a result of misunderstanding or misapplying some aspect of the rules to avoid pregnancy. So the first suggestion for couples who believe that NFP doesn’t work for them is to meet with an NFP teacher and determine whether NFP really ‘didn’t work’ or whether they just didn’t really use NFP.

Statistically NFP is as effective as any contraceptive and true surprise pregnancies (those that occur despite consistent, correct application of the rules to avoid pregnancy) are so rare that they can honestly be considered little miracles, but they do occur and here we come to the heart of the difference between NFP and contraception - the question of who is really in charge of planning our families.

The answer is that it is always and only God who is charge and that He has a specific plan for each of our families that only He knows the whole of. He reveals this plan to us in bits and pieces as it is time for us to act to cooperate with it, but usually He doesn't let us know years in advance exactly how many children He has in mind for us, nor how they will be spaced. What He asks of each couple is to prayerfully and honestly try to discern His will for them and then to cooperate with that plan.

A couple who believes that it is not God’s will for them to have another child at present cooperate with God and do what is right by using NFP to avoid pregnancy. If a couple conceives despite their best efforts not to, however, they can then trust that God is telling them, in no uncertain terms, that His will for them has changed. It doesn't mean that they necessarily did anything wrong in their use of NFP or even that they incorrectly discerned God's will when they determined that they ought to avoid pregnancy. It simply means that right then God is asking them to accept one more child . . . right then.

This can be shocking and upsetting because we are used to thinking that we are the ones in control of our lives. But we aren't really. Ever. In any area of our lives.
 
When scientific literature discusses the ‘failure rate’ of a method of family planning this refers to the number of pregnancies that occur despite correct use of the method and even in this sense NFP is no more likely to ‘fail’ than other methods of family planning. Really, however, there are no ‘failures’ with NFP because even children whose conception completely surprises their parents (and their parents’ NFP teachers) are specifically willed by God. A couple who uses NFP is far more likely to understand this than a couple who contracepts because the cycle-to-cycle discernment process that they must go through in order to continue to avoid pregnancy encourages them to recognize that they are to be cooperating with God’s plan for their family rather than doing the planning themselves.
 
God sees the whole picture and we do not. He loves each of us and each of our children more than any of us can possibly imagine and we must learn to trust Him. And this is what Catholic family planning really amounts to for all of us – trusting that God is in control, even as we work to cooperate with His plan for each of us, and that “in everything God works for good with those who love Him” (Rom. 8:28).

Like much of life it's simple, but it's definitely not easy.

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Sara Fox Peterson is a certified teacher of the Billings Ovulation Method of NFP, a regular columnist for CatholicMom.com and the mother of two.

FOOTNOTES:

1. See Lumen Gentium, 25.

2. Prior to 1930 all Christian churches (i.e. all of Protestantism, Orthodoxy, etc.), not just the Catholic Church, held that contraception was always gravely immoral.

3.  See http://www.woomb.org/bom/trials/index.html and http://www.ccli.org/nfp/effect1.shtml

For more information about NFP or to locate a certified NFP teacher contact one of the following organizations:

The Billings Ovulation Method Association: (651) 699-8139 www.boma-usa.org

Couple to Couple League International: (513) 471-2000  www.ccli.org

FertilityCare Centers of America: www.fertilitycare.org

The World Organisation Ovulation Method Billings: 61 3 9481 1722 www.woomb.org